Bodies Found At Crematory

Some Sets Of Remains Had Been Left Sitting Out For Years At The Georgia Facility.

February 17, 2002|By Stephanie Simon, National Correspondent

Investigators scouring the woods behind a crematory in rural Georgia found scores of decomposing corpses Saturday, including at least 93 intact bodies and other remains scattered along the ground.

"You'd walk an area and see a skull here, a leg bone there, a rib cage over there. It was very gruesome," said John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Ray Brent Marsh, the operator of the Tri-State Crematory, was arrested and taken into custody in Walker County, in the northwest corner of Georgia. He was charged with theft by deception.

Authorities allege that he contracted with funeral homes in three states to cremate bodies, but instead dumped the corpses in the crematory, in storage sheds or in the woods on his 16-acre property. Marsh had been running the crematory for several years on behalf of his parents, who are prominent civic activists.

The scene was so overwhelming that Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes declared a state of emergency in Walker County and sent in dozens of state investigators. By late Saturday, they had identified 13 corpses, discovered 80 others intact and collected uncounted numbers of bones.

Bankhead said some of the bodies were found in rusty coffins, some of which could be up to 10 years old.

"At one time, they apparently were buried in the ground in some other cemetery and were dug up and taken to the crematory," he said. "We don't know why that is."

More than 100 investigators were to comb the crematory grounds throughout the weekend, while grief counselors waited in a local church to counsel families whose loved ones had been sent to the Tri-State Crematory.

While several of the corpses were identified from toe tags, many more were decomposed to bare bones. Authorities said they have no reason to suspect homicide in any case; they believe all of the remains come from bodies brought to the site for cremation. But there is no chance they will be able to identify them all.

The probe of the Tri-State Crematory, which serves northwest Georgia and southeast Alabama and Tennessee, began Friday, when the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Atlanta received an anonymous call complaining about the stench from the property. EPA investigators visited the site and found a human skull. They then called in local investigators.